I listed a stack of large instruments I have here in the office and have to find places for in the warehouse. The funny thing is, these radio system testers Ken probably thought were worth a lot are only worth $100-$150. And the other two are going for $2000 and $700.
I got out the Voldyne and the shakuhachi but just felt too tired to do anything and just watched videos, drank sake and went to bed around 3.
I woke up around 2 and lay in bed for a while, thinking about tasks. I remember as a first-grader having such fun with Legos. They were pure fun. I could lose myself in playing with them
But what if there was a requirement that the student must produce, say, 5 Lego creations that they'll be graded on? So now there's what I'll call "weight" attached. If you don't complete this task, you'll get a low grade for it so now it's more of a job.
Now, there might be plenty of Legos and you might have plenty of imagination so for you the "weight" is far below, far away. And it's fun coming up with new ideas. So it's still largely fun for you. I felt this way at least at times with regard to art, at which I was considered a talent.
But say there's a limited supply of Legos and you're not all that good at making things with them. Now you hate Lego class. You feel about it the way a lot of kids feel about math or English. It's a job and one you dislike. I felt this way about math.
It's natural to avoid things you don't like. Due to this and also because I don't think I had a good model in the adults around me (both parents were procrastinators and as we fell in caste we went from being surrounded by middle-class people to being surrounded by ex-hippie losers, druggies, weirdos, etc.)
I've been particularly bad about paperwork. I think I'd not have developed this problem if we'd stayed middle-class, with its culture of letter-writing and not only turning in homework but doing so on time. Instead, among the underclass, paperwork always means trouble. Something bad is going to happen. They're gonna take us off of Food Stamps or they insist we get Social Security numbers. In this environment, procrastination might be a useful adaptation. Procrastinate, and they'll still kick you off Food Stamps, but your kids will eat for another months. Procrastinate, and the landlord has to hold off another month in raising the rent or evicting you.
The Hawaiians around us had a fear, really a dread, of paperwork. Paperwork meant something was going to get taken away. And I guess I internalized that, living as we did like the poor Hawaiians although of course even poorer.
Getting back to whether something's play or a job, I think, comes down to the balance between weight and reward. I mentioned that hunter-gatherers do a lot of things that are considered fun in Western culture like, well, hunting and gathering. And they do things communally where they can, and talk and sing songs to make it more fun. In good times the weight is decreased and the reward is increased, at least in relation.
But what if you're hunting a deer and the folks back in camp haven't had meat in weeks? Now there are consequences if you don't produce. Now it's more like a job. Still, the reward (either getting a deer or at least the gratitude of your people if they know you tried your best) outweighs the consequences of not going out hunting: your people will not eat meat for sure that day, and you'll be called lazy. So you go out ...
The key to getting good at something is to have internal goals. An internal goal might be learning to do a "360' on a skateboard, something I worked really hard at. I got where I could do a 180, and sometimes 3/4 of the way around. But I never got a dependable 360 like the hot shots did. I also worked on the "tic tac" and was the neighborhood champion at that. (Actually the tic tac is pretty good exercise, maybe should get a board...). These were internal goals. Learning to surf was actually pretty hard work but I loved it. Again, internal goals.
But a kid up the street from where was lived in Pupukea, Fielding Benson, was pushed hard to be a surfer. In rebellion, he became an ace skateboarder. His father, "Colonel" Benson, had a daughter, Becky Benson, who was a champion surfer but being female, would never be a superstar or make the kind of money a male champion could. Colonel Benson saw in Fielding the ideal material to mold a star surfer from young age. I'd never heard of someone not liking to surf, but Fielding talked about it like some kids talk about math.
I was expected to become an artist. I think I should have been either pushed harder, like how Robert Crumb was put through "art boot camp "for years by his older brother. Or pushed less, so I could have fun and my internal goals would take care of quality.
And I wasn't even intended to become an artist by anyone but my mother. Sure I doodled all the time because every time I turned around it was, "Here's some paper, here's some pens!" and my parents being frustrated artists, there were always art materials around. But if someone had to describe me when I was little, I was a musical kid. I even got, around age 9 or 10, a big hardcover book by Leonard Bernstein about music for kids. Whichever relative gave it to me had no idea we were not allowed to touch the piano. Art didn't "make noise".
Maybe my parents thought an artist was "higher class" than a musician? That may have been a big part of it. Little did they know how much of a crapshoot the economy would become.
The thing is that by my teens art was becoming a job because it was often by selling a painting or drawing that we ate some days. So there were expectations, and it just became a job. I suspect that if I'd been successful the rest of the family would have wanted to live off of me and of course I'd feel obligated to support them because in Hawaii culture that's what you do. What a nightmare. Did I realize all this when I was, say, 15? Or did I just suspect something was awry? I remember constantly hammering myself, "How come I'm not in my room drawing for 3 hours a day?" I had art instruction books with schedules calling for hours and hours a day. I'd look at the schedule laid out in "The Natural Way To Draw" and shudder. I can't be any good if I can't do that!
There were times when I was drawing the details of a crab claw or a realistic breaking wave and it was really fun. But there was not enough fun to repay me for the hours I'd have to apparently drudge away at it, the low pay, and the reality that was constantly told me that "artists only make money after they're dead".
Music was even further away (if I'd gone anywhere with that nasty old trumpet I was given in Band, mom would have put a stop to it as "noise") but I kept it going strong in my head. It was always there for me. Jim Morrison sang "The music is your only friend" and I really felt that way. Again internal vs. external goals. I could work a job and that would take care of living, just barely, and take the consequences out of learning music because the job would provide the money needed for living. I actually chose electronics because I loved synthesizers.
I didn't go that far in electronics because I wasn't deeply interested in it. Ideally, while working as a bench tech, I'd have set up a bench in my apartment and learned to do SMT work and PCB rework and kept up on the latest techniques, but I was too interested in zooming around on motorcycles to sit around at home and smell flux after I'd done that for 8-10 hours at work. Of course if I'd done that I'd never have had the interesting sports "career" I did in the early/mid 90s, and if I'd done everything right I'd not have the perspective I do now.
So the way to get around procrastination is to remind myself that it's something I learned during a traumatic part of my life but that it's a a drawback now. And to remind myself of what fun might be in an activity, like in doing laundry there's the nice feeling of clearing some dirty clothes out of the hamper, the smell of the soap, and the bit of exercise from working the plunger. Then the nice laundry smell upstairs as I hang the clothes up and hear the pitter-pat of the water dropping on the catch basin. And I turn the fan on it so I hear the quiet hum of the fan as I sleep downstairs.
One thing I'd been putting off was getting a hair cut, so I got curious if I could do a decent hair cut without using the barber's cape but by spreading out some plastic to catch the hair and bending forward so the hair won't fall on me. It works fine. It's just a matter of being very thorough but that's something I know how to do. When I was a kid I needed glasses and I couldn't see the dirt on the floor so when I swept I'd compensate by just being very thorough. Same thing. And I worked out an angle to see the back of my neck better in the bathroom mirror when shaving that area after the hair cut.
This is good because the easier I can make it, the more likely I'll keep up with my hair cuts. A buzz cut is really supposed to be re-done every 3 weeks on the outside.
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